Fracture – Cubist iPhone app

I’m both excited and relieved to announce that my first iPhone app has been approved and is now available in the App Store.

Fracture is the latest in a series of cubism based applications that include Self Portrait? and the WiiMote portrait generator. This time, however, you’re able to paint using your own photos whilst on the move. You can also save them to your image galley.

The basic premise behind cubism is to represent the subject from a range of viewpoints in a 2 dimensional painting. The subject is fragmented and reassembled to provide an abstract 3D form. Aesthetics employed by masters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque have been studied and recreated in this painting tool. I’ve particularly attempted to recreate the style of the Analytical Cubism movement which was developed between 1908-1912.

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard - Picasso

Violin and Candlestick - Braque

Fracture was built using openFrameworks. Several members of the OF community, including Memo Akten and Zach Gage collaborated to write the ofxiPhone addon and a wide range of wrapper libraries. This allows OF users to build iPhone and iPad apps without having to learn (much) Objective-C, which, from my experience, it a complete pain in the balls. It was great to able to use my existing skillset and jump straight into iOS development.

I did, however, have to use Objective-C when it came to developing the interface. This was by far my biggest challenge. I found that I couldn’t take advantage of many of the tutorials and standard Apple interface solutions, such as the Navigation View. This was due to the fact that OF projects are set up differently to standard Obj-C projects. As a result of this, I intend to release a simple OF iPhone project which implements many of the interface elements I have used. Check back soon for that.

So install it, have a go and please email your best paintings to fracture [at] augmatic.co.uk to be featured in the Fracture Gallery. And if you like it, don’t forget to comment.

***** EDIT – 28/11/10 *****

I’ve been really surprised by the level of interest in Fracture. It has been featured by the following:

Love it. I’ve seen this effect around the net a few times, could you please describe or name the algorithm you used to do this? The aesthetics in the end result are fantastic…I don’t have an iPhone and I’d love to blow the minds of some of my art professors ;)

Hi there, the app is great and the ‘paintings’ look so good that you’d like to frame them … and one finds out that the app only generates images in tiny resolution ! What’s that about. Even if processing would take longer – this way the images are not usable. You cannot even zoom in on a 3GS screen without having the enlarged pixels jump in your eyes.

This problem is already on the list of features for the next update. I’ll be optimising the code fairly soon which will hopefully allow me to output images at a higher resolution. They should be around 640×960.

I think the larger success of this app will hinge on the resolution. It’s easily understood that the way it’s coded and the speed of the device may set practical limits – however, from a user’s perspective even 640×960 is not very large (yet a great improvement to what it is now). I created some really nice ‘paintings’ with this app but they are not good for printing as is or with the suggested larger 640×960. Too bad.

One more thing – when you pick e.g. a square image it’s stretched to the canvas with the screen ration. Not good. The photos ratio should not change.

I will be experimenting with increasing the canvas size to 640×960. I believe that’s the highest I’ll be able to go without slowing down the app too much. If I then export higher than this, all I’ll be doing is stretching that 640×960 image. I’d love to see some of your paintings. Send a couple to fracture at augmatic dot co dot uk if you get time.

With regards to the square image issue, I was aware of this but decided not to fix it for the first release as the vast majority of people will be using images taken on the device. It’s on the to-do list.

hi james, your works in AR is really interesting . I’m a Flash,Flex developer and I also work with C++ and C# . I had seen AR works and I really liked it but I thought it’s something only huge and wealthy companies can do . but when I saw your works they were fantastic. I really want to learn these works but I don’t know anything about how it works . if you introduce me a source or a site about this kind of work you do that can be start for me in this area I’ll be appreciated .
thanks

hi james , me again . thansk for your answer . seems I need to learn a little bit of 3d modelling . I want to know which software you suggest , 3dmax or maya or ? someone at the adobe site was suggested to learn “blender” . but I want to know which one do you suggest .
thanks again

You don’t necessarily need to learn any 3D software. Many of my applications such as particle beam, AR business card + AR ribbons didn’t make use of 3D models. It was all done in Actionscript. If you do require need to make 3D models, I would suggest Blender as it is free and there is a plug-in that allows you to export AS3 classes.

James, I agree with Sam DeWitt that this app would need a much higher resolution but if that’s not possible, then that’s just what it is.
Unfortunately with this low resolution the usability does not exceed a plain entertainment level – but would you develop a windows based pc version of your app ? Processing power should not be an issue then. Frank

Hey James, maybe you can leave users do the cubism on low resolution and add an export feature to render a hiRes image.
So ppl can Play it fast and just take time and resorces if they decide to export it on bigger Resolution.